InkThieves
by mbilmey
Summary: Inkheart meets Story Thieves. Leona has her mother's gift of reading things to life. Despite being forbidden to use it, she and her friends have decided to form a group to save characters from horrible fates. She knows what she's doing is reckless, though, and it haunts her even as she carries Story Thieves, or "the rule book," around with her everywhere.
1. Chapter 1

Leona adjusted her sunglasses. They were classy almond spy-like sunglasses. She wished she could find a good language learning spell or something. The books she held was only in English. She knew enough English to get by. In fact, she even knew enough English to read the book, but her plan would involve writing and recreating a language would make this a whole different story…literally, and that wasn't going to help. The read the title again: _Story Thieves_. It made her skin crawl and filled her with exhilaration at the same time. Her mom used to love the concept of thieves, a title like that though would have sent her into a fit. Why? Because that was exactly what her mom and grandpa had been at one point. It really wasn't a bad thing, but it was always a mess. That's why Leona followed the rules—Bethany's rules.

"I always wonder: how do we know that we're in the right world and not just your own personal mockup of the real world?" Dusty complained. Leona tilted her head, imitating that cool look and didn't answer. The truth was, she had no idea. She tried not to think to hard about it or else she'd go crazy. The book in her hand was already making her ware at the seams.

"If you're worried, you can just keep to the rules," she told him in a careless tone, but look around. There's no story going on around here. This is the real world, trust me. Dusty continued to murmur his doubt.

"Hey, where's Prince?" Durante asked suddenly. Leona looked over her shoulder and feigned concern.

"What didn't she follow us?" Dusty was giving her one of his looks. He was the spitting image of his father and it unnerved her. How many times had they been caught sneaking out together as children and been given that same look?

"Stop," she said.

"What?" Durante questioned. Leona turned away before her face could redden anymore.

"Dusty's just giving me that look again."

"Leona," Durante started in a careful tone. "Where is Prince? We practically promised her parent's we'd look out for her." Leona finally lost composure; folding her arms and talking a little too loudly.

"Which is exactly why I left her out. Do you remember what happened the last time we brought her? She was almost smashed by a giant and tree! She's fine, at home. And soon my mom will wake up and-"

"What if she tells?" Dusty complained.

"Are you kidding me? She hates that world way too much to tattle."

"Okay, but you're mom isn't stupid. When she finds Blackie all the way from the palace with no sign of us, she's going to know," he continued. She wanted to protest that her uncle would find an excuse for them, but she knew it wasn't really fair to keep putting her favorite person in that situation. Leona sighed and pulled out the paper from the pages of the rule book.

"Fine, but if she gets hurt or in trouble, you two are fixing it _and_ reporting to her parents. I've said it before; I wash my hands of that twerp."

"I told you, I'll take responsibility for her," Durante insisted. Leona huffed and tried to relax. Reading in a mood like this was not going to be easy. An image from her mother's horror stories filled her mind of a man with a smashed face who was read out wrong. She slammed the book.

"Nope, can't do it right now, too tense. I need a soda." Dusty glared, but the practical Durante shrugged and headed up the street towards a fast food place. Soda was a miracle to each of them. With all the magic in the Inkworld, some things still remained unreachable. Her dad was a fabulous inventor, and would always strive to recreate the wonders of this world—things he'd never seen but his wife would speak of with nostalgia. His inventions never turned out quite right and it was unnerving when nymphs showed up in your plumbing system to complain. Durante's father would always huff at their efforts and seemed secretly pleased when they failed. He was like an extra uncle to her—the only person in the Inkworld who she felt understood her. Her actual uncle was pretty cool too, but he was always lecturing her on her carelessness. As if he was even that older than her!

So, soda was a rarity and a delight. At the restaurant, Leona sipped the sticky sweet lime drink and stared at the phone in her hands. She's pawned off a fictional diamond from a Snow White picture book for that one. Hopefully, it wouldn't cause any imbalance in the world or anything. Her uncle had been furious when he'd found out, but he still hadn't told her mother. Part of her suspected he'd wanted to do the same thing growing up and she was half-surprised he never joined them, but then that might be to the beautiful strolling player he was always talking to. Don't fall in love with the motley folk. It was a major rule of Inkworld that 100% of ink-people ignored. She glanced up at her friends. They were probably the oddest group ever, like a bunch of Demi-gods, only without the god part. Demis. Half-Inkworld; half-real. Half-Inkworld; Half-some-other-book. And then there was someone who technically shouldn't exist because his father was supposed to have died ages ago. The tapped her fingers absently on the rule book. This was a terrifying game that she really should leave alone. She wasn't going to though. She and Bethany had way too much in common. But then again, imagine a world without Durante?

"Are you going to get her?" Durante asked, as if on cue. Okay, maybe she could live without Durante. None of them should exist anyway. Just like Bethany. She looked at her phone again, scrolling through "books like Inkspell and Story Theives." So far the closest thing she'd found was a picture book about a teacher who has a magical story book. Not exactly what she was looking for, but handy to know about.

"Yeah, just a minute, and we'll have to find somewhere private."

"The bathroom," Dusty suggested the obvious with a smirk. Leona nodded in distraction. Were there really only two series about entering books? That was terrifying in itself. Maybe fanfiction would have something, but she was a little scared to know what reading fanfiction would do. Could you end up with twenty Bethany's and thirty Dustfingers, all with a different personality? What if she read out some twisted fan version of herself and her mom? Or what if she read herself into a fanfiction where the Inkworld was actually happy? That'd be a miracle. Finding Fenoglio's unfinished sequel was on her bucket list. There were too many questions. She turned off the phone screen before she started to go crazy again, then she tried to suck out the last drips of soda from the bottom of the cup.

"Okay. I'm ready," she told them at last, "See you in a second." She hopped from the table and headed to the bathroom, the rule book glued to her hand as always. She was going to have to get it some kind of cover. Too bad she couldn't let Grandpa know about it, he'd probably give it a very durable casing. She'd already had to glue and staple it once. (She was very proud of this work, because you'd never know it had split in half and more was the pity that she couldn't show her handiwork it to her grandpa—although, he might get bothered and redo the whole thing).

In a bathroom stall, she took a deep breath and prayed no one would come in while she was reading. The worlds rolled off her tongue. She'd read them some many times, had experienced them so many times, that she didn't even have to use her imagination. It was real. And there was Balckie, squished against the other wall.

"Always a bathroom," Blackie moaned, trying to keep her cloak from touching the toilet seat, "Why?"

"It's private," Leona said, trying to brush it off as she bust through the stall door.

"No, why do you keep leaving me behind?" Leona adjusted her glasses in the mirror.

"You're too young."

"I'm as old as you were when you started!"

"And I got into tons of trouble, and practically died once. I was lucky that book ended in a major plot twist. I follow the rules now," she explained holding up the book.

"You and your rules," Blackie muttered looking into the mirror and trying to do something with her hair. Her real name was long like Giovantellarie or something wild like that, but by the age of five she'd convinced most people to call her Prince—except Leona and Dusty who called her Blackie. It had been Leona's idea of course. She couldn't stand that anyone could be spoiled enough to insist on naming themselves. Prince was a pretty obvious reference, so Leona decided to preserve the name of the legendary figure without giving her the satisfaction of being referred to like royalty—and then Dusty added the diminutive. They'd almost called her Beary, she was lucky.

They walked out of the bathroom and Dusty waved. Blackie waved back at him and they plopped down.

"Okay, so what's the plan for today?" Durante asked. Leona casually flipped though the rule book, a little more relaxed now that Blackie was safely through and had her voice and everything. She stopped on a page that was marked up. Old Elinor would have had a heart attack to see it. It was the exact moment when the magister first stole Bethany's powers. What she'd give for that power. She was half-fictional wasn't she? Why couldn't she just hop in and out of books? Reading and writing took forever. Bethany's spectacular-ness probably had something to do with Nobody. Was the sequel out yet? If only she could talk to Bethany, but she didn't dare, not yet and not after having read the rule book. The rule book was probably the most dangerous book to ever read from, except maybe Inkspell. She didn't even want to think about what could happen if she read Inkspell out loud. Just having it downloaded to her phone gave her nightmares, but she had to have it to get home. It was at least better than Inkdeath. She'd read it once, and then proceeded to rip it to shreds. Fenoglio would have demanded to see the writer in court, not because of plagiarism but because of what he went through. It was history now and it shouldn't have made her so mad, but it did. She understood the Magister on that plane, but she figured Bethany did too. It was the paradox of causality. Did the writer make all those terrible things happen or was she just inspired to write what actually did happen? When people like Kiel or Dustfinger didn't die, what happened then? Is that the real reason why the original Inkheart, as well as any record of Fenoglio, had long ceased to exist in the real world? Because the story didn't actually happen? _Always. More. Questions._

Leona flipped away from the dangerous rulebook with its dangerous thoughts. The preview to the next book was the most frightening of all since it seems their thieving had caught up to them. She frowned. Her mom had never had to worry about reading this much, although granted she'd had much worse things to deal with and still woke up with nightmares.

"I thought we would save Prim," she said pulling up an image of the Hunger Games on her phone, "And maybe Finnick, and Rue if we have time…It'll take a bit of research to figure out."

"That's kind of an intense book, and a really popular one that we could easily get noticed in. Are you sure you want to jump right into that one? I mean, I think we should eventually, but now?" Durante cautioned. Leona nodded carefully.

"Not, now exactly. I only mean that I think that should be our next big mission, but of course we'll have to train for it first. We've come a long way and I'd say we're pretty equipped. So, what's an already ruined world where we can train?"

"You are not about to suggest fan fiction are you?" Dusty moaned. Leona smiled.

"One day we're going to get caught."

"Look, we'll just fill in for a couple fan-double nameless tributes. I'm sure the fan Capitol won't be half as terrifying as the real Capitol. We'll still follow the rules and we'll pick a fic that was published so long ago the author won't even notice it if it changes."

"Sounds like it will work, let's do it," Durante agreed. The deaths or half-deaths of his father before his birth made him a good ally for this saving-game, but the ten years of his father's wanderings and the mess that came afterward also made him cautious enough to keep them out of real trouble. His approval always made Leona relax a little.

"Okay, let's go do some research first so I can make sure we can get in and out and that everything goes the way we want it to."

"Yes!" Blackie said with a fist-pump. Leona rolled her eyes and googled the nearest library. She was content though. _Hunger Games_ would bring them one step closer to entering the rule book. She wanted three or so dangerous things from that book and would need a lot of practice in reading and entering to get them. She thought with a shiver that the lack of actual Keil Gnomenfoot books might have all too much in common with the lack of actual Inkheart—all because neither Bethany nor Mo nor Meggie ever obeyed their own rules. Breaking rules was stupid, and yet Leona was still going to do it, eventually.


	2. Chapter 2

They sat in front of a library computer and scrolled through thousands of results of fanfiction.

"Okay, so let's pick a random number of the Games that you could easily manipulate and go for it," Durante suggested. Reading _Hunger Games_ had taken a lot of sneaking about and hiding them from her Mom. All of them but Dusty had read the books—he hated reading. Blackie said she'd read them, but Leona never took her word for anything. All of them had seen the movies. Movies as a whole had been terrifying at first, but Leona eventually found it very comforting when the monsters and villains of the world were confined to a box. Her mom would flip if she knew anything they did. Leona shivered to imagine what she'd say if she knew what they were about to do. _This is so bad Leona_ , she said to herself, _so bad, and yet you do it anyway_.

It was even more risky because she knew very little about how fanfiction worked. The next book might tell her, but she hadn't been able to get a copy yet. It wasn't as though she had a mailing address where she could send it. She'd signed up for Tumblr specifically to message the author in hopes of getting hints, but he told her nothing helpful. Spoilers, he claimed.

"I though this is against the rules," Dusty complained. "No fanfiction."

"It's not," Leona bit out.

"You said…"

"The rules say nothing about fanfiction," she determined. "I just normally try to avoid it because their world are even less stable then out own, and then there's…you know… _him_." She never really explained who _he_ was. _He_ had taken his own headcanons, as they call them, and brought them into the Inkworld, causing extreme chaos. Most people she knew liked to pretend he didn't exist or else would mention him only in passing, but she'd read _Inkdeath_ and she knew everything. As far as she was concerned, the devil himself would have brightened the story in the shadow of Orpheus.

"Click on that one, it's short," Blackie said, jabbing her finger at the screen, trying to point out the word count. Leona rolled her eyes and clicked the link. It was simple English with short snippets. It might actually work. She read through the few short chapters quickly.

"What about this Durante? It's a random number of the games, is clearly fan made, and can easily be built on." He nodded, leaning closer to the screen.

"Perfect. You can write us in as part of the next two chapters."

Leona excitedly opened google docs and resize the window so she could look at her and their words side by side. According to the Ink-trilogy, Orpheus once claimed that you could only use words already in the story, but her mother had proved him wrong. She had verified this on numerous occasions. This time, it should be easy. She stretched her fingers and took a deep breath. _Live the story._ She closed her eyes and envisioned the characters described so far. She paused for a second, trying to think of American names.

"Okay. I'm going to write us in as tributes," she started with anticipation, "Who should go with who? We have to have a girl and a boy for each district, which means I'll only have to write two short chapters to get us in." They all fell quiet. Prince shrugged.

"I don't care. Can I be in district 12?"

"No. It's three or four, I'm not writing out all the districts. Dusty, look up the districts for me." Leona handed him her phone.

"So….three is tech and four is fishing. Oh, and four has careers…I think…sometimes."

"Let's not pretend to be careers," Leona muttered.

"I don't mind the fishing district," Durante suggested. Leona typed his name under "District Four."

"Is there a fire district?" Dusty asked, leaning to close. She thought about the writer's original words. Who would they pair? She typed both Blackie and Dusty under district 3. Her heart pounded a little. It worked out that she'd brought Blackie, but it could end so badly. She deleted each name and retyped it. No names. That was one of Bethany's rules. It was also a general fanfiction rule.

 _District 3_

 _Alaura Walters_

 _Danny Ellison_

 _District_

 _Ebony Prince_

 _Dustin…_

"Something with Fire this time," Dusty suggested. Leona just grunted and typed Flame. These names were starting to be typical for them. She should probably use more generic names like "Maria," but she was worried that not staying true to their characters would make the pass from one world to another more difficult. She hoped Flame wasn't too much of a personal flare.

"I can't write with all of you hovering like this!" she complained. "Go do something."

"Fine," Blackie said. "You're boring when you get writing anyway and you never let us help. Let's play sardines upstairs."

"How long do you think it will take?" Durante asked. Leona shrugged. Not too long.

"I'll come fine you when I'm satisfied," she said. Blackie grabbed Durante's hand. "Come on, let her do her boring stuff. Do you think this library has the _Avengers_? I've wanted to see it ever since that trailer."

"Bring me a book about the military, will you? Oh, and a recipe book. Also anything about survival." She relaxed when they were gone and started to type. She was a decent writer, but matching someone else's style exactly took specific skill.

 _I hang behind my parents as we walk to the reaping. I am their only child. I don't think I'll be picked. There are many more poor people in the district who probably put their names in a hundred times for food. There was no way I was going to volunteer. Maybe we'd have a volunteer this year. District three never had as many volunteers as one or two. The lady in the square gave her usual speech. "Ladies first" she said and crossed over to the girl's bowl to pick out a name. "Alaura Walters." My mouth drops open._


End file.
